Sometimes, the most important things in life are the tiniest most minuscule details. Like the sudden realization that you are nothing but an extra in someone else's daily life. A background figure in an endless flurry of memories and to-do lists. Or hearing the pitter-patter of rain drops on your roof top late at night as you wonder, if other people in other places can hear it too. Or the sound of a bird chirping its jolly tune in the morning and thinking about what the day will bring to that bird and other people who hear its song throughout the day. Or simply watching the blazing sun melt into the horizon of the sea. A great ball of fire and bubbling gas millions of light-years away disappearing into darkness as it becomes a new day on the other half of the world, while your day has just ended. What did you do that day? What will the people who's day is only beginning do? Your tomorrow is their today. But your today was also their yesterday. What did they do? What will they do? Perhaps a father will take his son fishing, and the small child will catch his first fish, creating a memory that will last a lifetime. "That time I caught my first fish". Or maybe a teenage girl will get her first kiss, a story to be told among her circle of friends with hushed giggles and slight murmurs. Maybe she's the first of her group. Maybe she's the last. What if there will be a man who got into a car accident one night, but he'll live and his wife will be happy, because he's all she's got left. Or maybe just nothing will happen. Maybe it's a holiday on that other half of the world and everyone will enjoy a day of leisure and sunshine and reading and conversing and eating. For one day they can escape the stresses of their daily lives And just exist. And rejoice in the fact of their existence. They can just sit there and do nothing but exist. They can exist and ponder about the other half of the world, our half, and wonder if our lives are better than theirs. They can wonder if there is a man named Peter who is just trying to get by because things are falling apart inside his home, both literally and emotionally. Or if there is an elderly woman who goes by the name Lorraine but her real name is Susan because people have just always called her that and she never thought to correct them because frankly, she didn't mind the name, who just perfected her secret recipe for pecan pie. Maybe they won't wonder about these people who may or may not exist on our half of the earth. And maybe they don't exist. But in a sense, they do exist now, because they have been conjured up in our minds. But that's the only place where they exist. In our minds. And in our minds they live. Tucked away in a folder labeled "Non-existent people I made up" right in between the hundreds and thousands and millions of memories and thoughts and fantasies that flood the mind daily. All squeezed into that brain of yours that sits inside that head of yours that rests on those shoulders of yours that are wearing a navy blue tweed blazer and your best pair of shoes with the nicest crispest skirt you own because you have a big interview with a college and if you get accepted your family will be proud and your friends will be proud and you'll be sort of proud too, Because its what you'd been working so hard for for these thirteen some odd years. All those sleepless nights of studying for that test you had the next morning and all those hours you put into that science fair project in the seventh grade. All leading up to this moment of ultimate success. But your journey doesn't end there. In fact, it's only beginning. It's only beginning because you just entered a new stage of life. But sometimes that new stage is intimidating and you're scared and you only want to sit on your mother's lap so she can hold you and rock you to sleep and you wish you could start over and have more time. You suddenly wish you were a six year old, like the other six year olds who are likely living on your half and the other half of the planet alike. The six year olds who probably wish they were older so they could sit at the big kid table at thanksgiving, but their Aunt Claire won't let them because they spill too much, and Aunt Claire doesn't like that sort of thing. And the kids at the big kid table, the nine to thirteen year olds, wish they were old enough to sit at the big table with the rest of the family, but they can't, because cousin Bobbie and Uncle George took the last two seats. Because apparently, seniority rules. And the nine to thirteen year olds wish they were seventeen so they could be a year older than cousin Bobbie so they could sit at the table with the adults and feel sophisticated and important and be taken seriously. And the funny thing is, that the people seated at the big table wish they were sitting at the big kid table or the little kid table, because those are, or rather were, their wonder years. At the time they didn't know it, they just wanted to sit at the big kid table and then the grown up table but they were stuck at the little kid table. And now they wish they were still stuck at the little kid table for spilling too much, because really, that's all they ever had to worry about. The ones at the little kid table don't have to worry about taxes, or money, or jobs, or the current state of the economy, or who they'll vote for president in the next election, or just how they're gonna put those kids through college. And when those kids are in college... those kids...they'll just want to be back at the little kid table they so whole heartedly wanted to leave back when they were six and nine and thirteen and every year in between.